Buy Now whilst stocks last!! Special Offer! Shop-Window Movie!!

Rating: 3/10 (18 February 2006)

The product placement in this film is blatant and quite astonishing. At one point Johanssen watches incredulously -- like us -- a re-run of her famous monochrome TV ad for Mr Kline. This cynical two fingers at the viewer is a hanging offence in my book. Waiting to spot the next 'big name' distracts from this supermarket-fare, 'buy-one-get-one-free' story of the good guys and the bad guys racing to catch up with your usual Romeo and Juliet couple on the run. Transfer the glossy futuristic scenery and bog standard car chases to downtown LA or New York or even Brixton on a Saturday night and you'd be watching the same tired story. There are reverberating echos here of 'Logan's Run' and 'Coma.' McGregor out-planks K Reeves, whilst Scarlett 'pouty' Johansson glows breathtakingly but has only two emotional expressions which she uses alternately, hoping, no doubt, that no-one has noticed she can't actually act. The truncated final scene said it all: Let's get out of here, back to the real world. Let's have a Coke and a Colonel Kentucky and make the world a better place in which to stroll in our Calvin Kline jeans. Let's surf the net using MSN, surrounded by the stench of capitalism. Who cares if we're all being manipulated by an invisible controlling force? Oh, we're back on the Island....